Local media targeted on Obamacare

President Barack Obama has bungled HealthCare.gov so badly that he’s told senior aides to not even try to win positive coverage from the national press.

Instead, they’re going local.

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In the past month, Obama and his Cabinet have hit nine of the top 10 cities with the highest concentration of the uninsured, while senior administration officials have held almost daily reporter conference calls in nearly a dozen states to challenge Republican governors who refuse to expand Medicaid.

Obama’s political arm, Organizing for Action, is taking a similar approach, holding protests — some attended by only a dozen or so people — that win coverage on the local pages of the nation’s small-town newspapers.

The local strategy is unusually aggressive, even for a president on the ropes and desperate to circumvent the national media. It’s been the only way to break through the glut of bad headlines and go on the offense to make the law work — although even when the White House showers attention on small markets, the results can be mixed.

The effort mirrors how Obama’s presidential campaigns operated. Pay special attention to local press because that’s where far more people who Obama wants to target get their news.

Josh Earnest, the principal deputy White House press secretary, got top billing in front page stories last week in The Times and Democrat of Orangeburg, S.C., The Post and Courier of Charleston, S.C., and the Portland Press Herald in Maine — offering the same talking points that the administration repeats daily in Washington without much notice.

And while the White House briefing room is dominated by national news outlets, just behind the door where the communications staff works is a wall covered with reproductions of front pages of local newspapers. Stories about Obama’s initiatives are outlined with yellow highlighter.

Obama, thin-skinned about media coverage of his presidency and often frustrated by the White House press corps, knows a few favorable local headlines is as good as it gets these days. He made a rare public admission during his Nov. 14 press conference that his aides found strikingly candid for the image-conscious president: The media have been justifiably hard on him.

“Right now, everybody is properly focused on us not doing a good job on the rollout, and that’s legitimate and I get it,” Obama said, repeating a sentiment he’s delivered privately to top aides. “There have been times where I thought we were kind of slapped around a little bit unjustly. This one is deserved. Right? It’s on us.”

The centerpiece of the local strategy is the White House’s campaign against Republican governors or legislatures in 24 states that have declined to accept federal money to open up Medicaid to 5.4 million people. With a faulty website, the White House has lost much of the high ground to push back on Obamacare attacks over the past two months, but the one exception is the GOP resistance to expand Medicaid access, said a senior administration official.

Republicans have made a big deal of the canceled policies on the individual market, the official said, but the GOP is responsible for leaving millions of Americans in limbo. This population earns too much to sign up for Medicaid and too little to qualify for tax subsidies to purchase private insurance in the exchanges.

On the local media calls, administration officials quantify the impact state by state. In Nebraska, for example, the White House targeted Republican Gov. Dave Heineman, saying his refusal to expand Medicaid leaves 48,000 residents without access to affordable coverage.

“They can score short-term political points by attacking the Affordable Care Act and blocking Medicaid expansion,” Earnest told Nebraska media last week. “Or on the other hand, they can actually save taxpayer dollars and ensure that thousands of their residents … would have access to quality, affordable health care.”

The Omaha World-Herald put the story on A6 under the headline: “Nebraska takes heat for not expanding Medicaid.”

But flip to the front of the business page in the same edition, and the news is less favorable for the White House: “Midlands employers expect jump in 2014 health costs.” The story details how Nebraska and Iowa employers are bracing for benefit cost increases that exceed the national average, due in part to the Affordable Care Act, according to the survey of employers.

The Times and Democrat of Orangeburg, S.C., stripped two stories across its front page last week — one was about canceled insurance policies, but the other focused on the White House demanding Republican Gov. Nikki Haley to open up Medicaid.